Our Home in the English Countryside

One of the best trips my family has taken was to England 7 or 8 years ago. For about two weeks, we roamed the English countryside and hit all the main sights before packing as much of London as we could into a few short days. Although we all wish we had more time in London, our home in the English countryside was an amazing home base to get to places like Bath, Durdle Door and Stonehenge.

I’ve talked before about the type of place we like to stay in the Caribbean, and we had the same checklist for England! Here, we did something a bit different and exchanged homes with another family. On a smaller scale than our move to Australia (we exchanged homes, cars and jobs with the family), we swapped houses to live in full comfort for our respective trips.

Our gorgeous country home was in Lamyatt, a tiny town near Bruton & Glastonbury. It was so great to have an entire house (plus two cats!) to ourselves as opposed to a cramped hotel room. We all got our own bedrooms, and in true English fashion the sprawling house had various sitting rooms and a great yard.

The views from our house were absolutely beautiful, and staying in a home really gave us a different experience of English life.

If you’re interested in swapping homes, there are a lot of very reputable websites out there like HomeExchange.com, Homelink and Intervac. I know my family definitely recommends home exchange – and look for lots more posts in the next few weeks about our time in England.